New Life to Old Spaces: Interior Design Art Installations

By Dornob Staff

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many houses were left – abandoned to the elements and beyond the possibility of repair. One group of artists, however, have found a way to reuse these deserted spaces in artistic ways – creating new spatial experiences around and within what were otherwise depressingly doomed structures.

In a way, these houses and stores are being treated with more reverence now than ever before – a respectful intervention that addresses issues of sustainability, reuse, disastrous events and community evolution.

In New Orleans, KKProjects took over “six previously abandoned structures: a former bakery, a storefront, and four 1800s houses” and turned them into “art projects involving the greater social ecosystem … to cultivate creativity and inspire the hearts, minds, and economy of the St Roch neighborhood and its visitors.”

Adaptive reuse of a kind, these buildings now have a sort of second life – lit up and reorganized to open up new conversations with the local community as well as the broader world of art and design.